Velvel on National Affairs

This progressive blog sets forth the personal views of the Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law on national events. Occasionally, the responses to his views or other interesting articles are also posted.

Monday, July 31, 2006

Overthrowing Mossadegh; Iranian Hatred For The U.S.; And The Crisis In Lebanon.

July 31, 2006

Re: Overthrowing Mossadegh; Iranian Hatred For The U.S.;And The Crisis In Lebanon.

From: Dean Lawrence R. VelvelVelvelOnNationalAffairs.com

Dear Colleagues:

In the post discussing Stephen Kinzer’s writing on the Philippines Insurrection in his recent book entitled Overthrow: America’s Century Of Regime Change From Hawaii To Iraq, it was said that a future post would discuss what Kinzer wrote about our conduct in Iran. There, in 1953, we manufactured the overthrow of an Iranian patriot and nationalist manned Mohammed Mossadegh. We had him replaced by a cruel tyrant, the Shah, Mohammed Reza Palevi -- who, among other repressive actions, created the notorious and ultra cruel secret police force called Savak. The Iranians, who generally liked America before we orchestrated the overthrow of Mossadegh, have largely hated us ever since. Our 1953 action paved the way for the rise to power of the mullahs, led to the Shah’s overthrow and the one year seizure of our embassy personnel in 1979, and, as said, led to enduring hatred of the United States.

Fortuitously, the present time is, of course, a somewhat odd moment to write about our horrendous misconduct towards Iran. For few if any doubt that Iran, along with Syria, is behind Hezbollah and in reality is, again with Syria, the cause of what one might sardonically call the current unpleasantness in the Middle East. This is not a time when this writer would feel very charitable towards Iran or Syria. (The Syrians also are, as I have always understood it, a very cruel people. Witness the first Assad’s leveling of the Syrian city of Hama because it was a center of dissent, and to his murder of, it is estimated, 30,000 to 40,000 of Hama’s people. Also, twenty-some years ago, when touring the Golan Heights, this writer was shown Syrian machine gun positions in caves where, to prevent the gunners from retreating or running, the gunners, the Israelis said, had been chained to the walls until killed. I know of no reason, then or now, to disbelieve the Israelis, and one’s reaction, as with the slaughter at Hama, is “nice people, those Syrians.”)

The current unpleasantness makes it more likely than ever that we are going to have to decide what, if anything, to do about Iran and Syria: we may be unable to continue to use America’s favorite foreign policy tactic of pretty much ignoring something until faced with budding or partially accomplished disaster, as we did before Pearl Harbor and as occurred with regard to Muslim fundamentalism in the 1990s and up until September 11, 2001 despite various bombings such as bombings of the World Trade Center (in 1993), of American embassies, and of the Cole. For one can just imagine what the situation might be in the current unpleasantness if Iran now possessed nuclear weapons, or what the situation would be in the future. Hezbollah’s fantastic build-up on the Lebanon-Israel border did not occur because Iran and Syria desire abiding peace in the Middle East -- at least so long as there is an Israel -- and it would be better to deal with those bums now than to wait until Iran is nuclear armed. For at that point maybe the Iranians would sponsor, cause, encourage -- use whatever word you want -- the building-up and progressive worsening of situations that could lead at minimum to a vast regional conflagration and, quite plausibly, to nuclear war. Israel is not going to go gently into that good night wished for Israelis by the Iranians and the Syrians, you know. It will be more like Samson pulling the temple down on the Philistines, or in this case on the effing Syrians and Iranians. Or maybe the U.S., Britain and other western countries will have to join a large Middle Eastern conventional war against those two countries. Who knows what might happen? Better to deal with it now, before Iran is nuclear armed. Maybe -- let us fervently hope, let us devoutly pray (to use Lincolnian phraseology) -- that negotiations, jaw jaw jawing instead of war war warring (as I think was said by Churchill), resolve or at least immensely tamp down the Middle Eastern furor. But we may as well concede that, so long as Iran and Syria persist in seeking the destruction of Israel, there can be no permanent peace in the Middle East. They have to be dealt with -- and before Iran has the bomb.

Even though one has no use whatever for the current governments of Iran or Syria, it may nonetheless be useful to know what we did to Mossadegh, so that one will understand a major reason why Iran hates us, and can understand as well how the ground got prepared for the rise in Iran of Muslim cleric fundamentalists, mullahs, who seem to preach hatred against us and the west for religious reasons as well as nationalistic ones.

* * * * *

Kinzer’s Iranian tale starts with John Foster Dulles.

Dulles was a child of exceptional privilege. A man who made decisions by lengthily communing with himself, his legal mind and the extraordinary contacts arising from his privileged birth and upbringing propelled him quickly to the top of what became one of America’s leading law firms, Sullivan & Cromwell. His clients were a roster of leading multinational corporations. He played ball with the Nazis until a threatened revolt of his law partners forced him to stop.

Dulles was devoutly, maybe even “wacked outly” religious, and after World War II, became a wacked out anticommunist, partly because of his religiosity. His views also were those of the elite, the privileged, and the multinational corporations he spent most of his adult life representing.

As a person he was stiff, confrontational, adversarial, and “wished neither to meet, accommodate, or negotiate with the enemy.” (P. 116.) (He thus counseled Eisenhower against summit meetings.) And, as said, he communed with himself to make decisions.

Dulles wanted to be Secretary of State. He machinated for this purpose, and “[d]uring the 1952 presidential campaign . . . . made a series of speeches accusing the Truman administration of weakness in the face of Communist advances.” (P. 117.) This was bushwa of the worst order, I would say; it was Truman who went into Korea (without Congressional authorization), after all. Dulles “promised that a Republican White House would ‘roll back’ Communism by securing the ‘liberation’ of nations that had fallen victim to” it. (P. 117.)

From John Foster Dulles, Kinzer turns to Britain and Mossadegh. From 1901 until the 1950s, Britain, through the largely government owned Anglo-Iranian oil company (today BP, I believe), had a monopoly on Iranian oil, on which England’s military power, industries and standard of living was largely dependent. Anglo-Iranian had a “grossly unequal contract, negotiated with a corrupt monarch” for the oil; the contract “required it to pay Iran just 16 percent of the money it earned from selling the country’s oil.” (P. 117.) It probably paid even less in actuality, “but the truth was never known” since no outsiders could audit the books. (P. 117.) However, it apparently is known that “Anglo-Iranian made more profit in 1950 alone than it had paid Iran in royalties over the previous half century.” (Pp. 117-118.)

Iran, in short, was a country that had long been and was continuing to be screwed over by Britain.

Enter Mossadegh. An aristocrat, idealistic, a believer in both nationalism and democracy, he became Prime Minister of Iran in 1951. In Spring, under his leadership, the Iranian oil industry was nationalized, just as, he would say, Britain had nationalized its coal and steel industries for its own people’s benefit (or so the British thought at the time). Iran paid compensation for the oil industry; Kinzer thinks it was paying much more than it fairly had to.

The British were outraged. They could not believe that a “backwards country like Iran” could deal them a blow, sahib. (P. 118.) “They scornfully rejected suggestions that they offer to split their profits with Iran on a fifty-fifty basis, as American companies were doing in nearby countries. Instead they vowed to resist.” (Pp. 118-119.)

This they did:

At various points they considered bribing Mossadegh, assassinating him, and launching a military invasion of Iran, a plan they might have carried out if President Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson had not become almost apoplectic on learning of it. The British sabotaged their own installations at Abadan in the hopes of convincing Mossadegh that he could not possibly run the oil industry without them; blockaded Iranian ports so no tankers could enter or leave; and appealed unsuccessfully to the United Nations Security Council and the International Court of Justice. Finally, they concluded that only one option was left. They resolved to organize a coup. (P. 119.)

Having “suborned” (p. 119) many local leaders over generations (as colonialists always did), Britain set in motion a coup d’etat. But Mossadegh discovered it and “ordered the British embassy shut and all its employees sent out of the country. Among them were the intelligence agents who were organizing the coup.” (P. 119.)

What’s a girl, er Britain, to do? Enter John Foster Dulles, his brother, CIA head Allen Dulles, and the “chief of CIA operations in the Middle East, Kermit Roosevelt,” the grandson of Theodore. (P. 120.)

When Kermit Roosevelt passed through London from the Middle East shortly after Eisenhower was elected, the Brits proposed to him that the CIA carry out the coup. He told them there was no chance of this under the Truman administration, which was still in office, but the incoming Republicans might be a different story. Even before Eisenhower was inaugurated, therefore, the Brits sent a man to Washington to talk to Foster Dulles, told him that Mossadegh must be overthrown because he was leading Iran to Communism -- which was a bunch of cock and bull -- and “gave Dulles the idea that he could portray Mossadegh’s overthrow as a ‘rollback’ of Communism” -- though Dulles knew Mossadegh was not a Communist. (P. 121.) Dulles knew that he would be able to work well with the CIA because his brother Allen was its Director, and together they overcame Eisenhower’s concerns at a National Security Council meeting. This gave Dulles the green light to pursue ‘two lifelong obsessions: fighting Communism and protecting the rights of multinational corporations.” (P. 122.)

Under the plan drawn up for us by the British, we would bribe journalists, preachers and other opinion leaders to create hostility to Mossadegh, would hire thugs to attack people, making it look as if the attacks were ordered by Mossadegh, would bribe parliament members, and would have General Zahedi, whom we anointed as future leader of Iran, arrest Mossadegh if necessary. Thus:

Roosevelt slipped into Iran at a remote border crossing on July 19, 1953, and immediately set about his subversive work. It took him just a few days to set Iran aflame. Using a network of Iranian agents and spending lavish amounts of money, he created an entirely artificial wave of anti-Mossadegh protest. Members of parliament withdrew their support from Mossadegh and denounced him with wild charges. Religious leaders gave sermons calling him an atheist, a Jew, and an infidel. Newspapers were filled with articles and cartoons depicting him as everything from a homosexual to an agent of British imperialism. He realized that some unseen hand was directing this campaign, but because he had such an ingrained and perhaps exaggerated faith in democracy, he did nothing to repress it. (P. 124.)

When Mossadegh nonetheless managed to initially thwart this plan, Roosevelt came up with a new plan. He would have the shah sign royal decrees dismissing Mossadegh as prime Minister and replacing him with Zahedi, with soldiers to arrest Mossadegh if he refused to step down. The courage-free shah was afraid to do this and vacillated, so Roosevelt had first the Shah’s sister and then the first General Norman Schwarzkopf speak to him. The unbrave Shah, a pilot, agreed on condition that he would immediately fly away as soon as he signed the decrees. Not for him the line of fire. But Mossadegh had discovered and managed to thwart this Rooseveltian plot too.

Now what was a girl (Roosevelt) to do? He called in “two of his top Iranian operatives,” who “had excellent relations with Tehran’s street gangs,” and told them he wanted ‘to use those gangs to set off riots around the city.” (Pp. 126-127.) The two agents didn’t want to do it because they feared arrest. Roosevelt gave them a choice. Accept $50,000 to do the job or he would kill them. They accepted the $50,000, “left the embassy compound with a briefcase full of cash” (p. 127), and

That week, a plague of violence descended on Tehran. Gangs of thugs ran wildly through the streets, breaking shop windows, firing guns into mosques, beating passersby, and shouting “Long Live Mossadegh and Communism!” Other thugs, claiming allegiance to the self-exiled shah, attacked the first ones. Leaders of both factions were actually working for Roosevelt. He wanted to create the impression that the country was degenerating into chaos, and he succeeded magnificently. (P. 127.)

Mossadegh did not engage in counter street fighting, and did not realize that many of the commanders of police units which he sent to restore order were on Roosevelt’s payroll. Tehran “fell into violent anarchy.” (P. 127.) Roosevelt “drove to a safe house where he had stashed General Zahedi, who proceeded to proclaim “that he was ‘the lawful prime minister by the Shah’s orders,’” and attackers tried to storm Mossadegh’s house, finally succeeding by using tanks. Mossadegh surrendered, the Shah came back, and Palevi told Kermit Roosevelt “‘I owe my throne to God, my people, my army -- and to you.’” (Pp. 127-128.)

After Mossadegh was gotten rid of, the Shah got rid of Zahedi, who was a strong figure, and from then on would be “free to shape Iran as he wished.” (P. 200.) With America as “Iran’s most important, political, economic, and military partner” (p.200), our oil companies -- Gulf, Standard of New Jersey, Texaco and Mobil -- received a 40 percent share in the new National Iranian Oil Company, and the shah established a tyrannical dictatorship, with the dreaded Savak doing dirty work for him. Dissent was not tolerated by the shah, and he

repressed opposition newspapers, political parties, trade unions, and civic groups. As a result, the only place Iranian dissidents could find a home was in mosques and religious schools, many of which were controlled by obscurantist clerics. Through their uncompromising resistance to the regime, these clerics won the popular support that secular figures never achieved. That made it all but inevitable that when revolution finally broke out in Iran, clerics would lead it. (P. 201, emphasis added.)

In the late 70s, a revolt against the Shah began gathering steam:

. . . angry crowds began surging through the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities crying “Death to the American shah!” That amazed many in the United States. Worse shocks lay ahead. The cleric who emerged as the revolution’s guiding figure, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, turned out to be bitterly anti-Western. His movement became so powerful that at the beginning of 1979, it forced the shah to flee into exile. A few months later, the new Khomeini regime sanctioned the seizure of the United States embassy in Tehran and the taking of American diplomats as hostage.

The hostage crisis deeply humiliated the United States, destroyed Jimmy Carter’s presidency, and turned millions of Americans into Iran haters. Because most Americans did not know what the United States had done to Iran in 1953, few had any idea why Iranians were so angry at the country they called “the great Satan.” (P. 202.)

Thus, our coup against Mossadegh in 1953, says Kinzer, left Iran under the “shah’s harsh rule for a quarter”

of a century. His repression ultimately set off a revolution that brought radical fundamentalists to power. Not satisfied with the humiliation they visited on the United States by holding fifty-four American diplomats hostage for fourteen months, these radicals sponsored deadly acts of terror against Western targets, among them a United States Marines barracks in Saudi Arabia and a Jewish community center in Argentina. Their example inspired Muslim fanatics around the world, including in neighboring Afghanistan, where the Taliban gave sanctuary to militants who carried out devastating attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001. None of this, as one Iranian diplomat wrote half a century after Operation Ajax [the coup] might have happened if Mossadegh had not been overthrown. (Pp. 202-203.)

So our misconduct of yesterday contributed greatly to, probably caused, the terrible situation in the Middle East we find ourselves in today.

What to do? Even though we disastrously were the cause of the current Iranian government and position, that government and position nonetheless do exist, and we can hardly say, “Sorry. Since we were the cause of the Iranian government and position, we will let Syria and Iran freely sponsor terrorism in the world and proceed to destroy Israel if they wish and are able to.” As bizarre as it sounds to say so, maybe we should apologize to Iran for what we did, just as the U.S. government has apologized for slavery and as doctors are now beginning to use apologies to help prevent bitter malpractice actions. But an apology is as far as we could go, and anyway don’t hold your breath waiting for the Bush/DICK administration to issue one.

Of course, it is obviously desirable at this point -- maybe even essential at this point -- that there be some kind of overall Middle East settlement, or as close to one as we can get, regardless of the fact that we largely caused the Iranian part of the problem. With this in mind, my off-the-top-of-the-head recommendation, which should be attempted via a general conference of all the parties (including Hezbollah and Hamas -- let’s have none of the shape of the table bullshit of Viet Nam days) would be this:

1. Pace George/DICK, but the United States would apologize to Iran for what America did to Mossadegh.

2. Syria, Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah would agree no longer to ever attack Israel in any way, whether directly, by guerrillas or by terrorists.

3. The area of Lebanon south of the Litany River will forever be a demilitarized zone: no rockets, no tanks, no artillery, no mortars, no heavy weapons of any type. This will be monitored and enforced by either a United Nations or a NATO force.

4. Hezbollah will disarm completely.

5. Israel will pledge not to bomb or invade southern Lebanon or any part of Lebanon.

6. There will be a Palestinian state in Gaza and wherever else it has already been decided that there should be such a state. That state will be a demilitarized one: no rockets, no tanks, no fighter planes or bombers, no artillery, etc. This will be monitored and enforced by either a United Nations or a NATO force.

7. Hamas will be totally disarmed.

8. Israel will agree never to militarily attack the Palestinian state (which will in turn agree never to attack Israel (and will be demilitarized anyhow).

9. Iran (and Syria too) will forsake nuclear weapons.

10. Iran and Syria will agree not to sponsor, assist, or finance terrorism anywhere in the world.

11. The United States will agree not to invade or take military action against Iran or Syria.

12. A group of the world’s more powerful nations, together perhaps with some Muslim countries, will be the guarantors of the entire arrangement, with the obligation to act militarily against a violator if necessary to prevent or stop the violation. The guarantors will include the United States, even though it will also be an obligated party under the agreement and could in theory be the target of military action by other guarantors if it were to violate the agreement.

It is always possible for, and often occurs that, international agreements are broken or prove unenforceable. Nonetheless, an agreement along the foregoing lines would, one think, mean peace. Is such an agreement achievable? Is it not achievable because it asks too much, is too idealistic as to what can be accomplished? Quite possibly, especially because all parties would have to be reasonable for it to be achieved. Unhappily, history shows that a need for reasonableness is the biggest argument against it. But it may nonetheless be worth a try. For it is transparent that a failure of settlement -- of overall settlement -- could be truly fraught.

It is a measure of how badly off our own country has become that another of the major obstacles to successfully using what, perhaps curiously, is an opportunity could conceivably, God forbid, be the stubbornness, lack of intelligence and lack of imagination of Bush, Cheney, Rice & Co. They are so wacked out on the subject of restraint-free, unilateral use of American power, from which we have suffered so much disaster under their so-called leadership, that they might be unwilling to impose on the U.S., the restraints which a true overall settlement might be likely to require. And to hope for the courage-and-intelligence-free congress and media to fill in the administration’s mental void with intelligent discussion that creates pressure would be to hope for too much.

Sad to say, another and possibly insuperable obstacle to the opportunity that is before the world is, quite conceivably, the hatred for Jews held by such as the Palestinians, Hezbollah, the Syrians, and maybe even the Iranians. There are those among those four groups who hate Jews far more than they love life. Far more than they love their children’s lives. Who are willing to fight to the last man and woman. It is people like that who may one day cause Armaggedon if people – often their allies of better will -- don’t control and suppress them, as Lebanon did not control or suppress Hezbollah. Will the world stand up to such people now? Will the world say, “You must not do this. You must make peace now, and we will stop you now from proceeding with your plans to eventually destroy Israel?

Why do I think the world will not do this? Why do 2000 years of history (and emails I receive from nutbags of left and right) persuade me that most of the world will not give a damn about the Jews? Which may leave Israel itself with only one choice to make. Shall it destroy the front line of the anti-Israel movement now, i.e., Hezbollah and likely Hamas too, and then maybe turn its attention to the Syrian and Iranian governments if it possesses the power and a need? Or shall it wait, hoping against hope that the balm of time will cure matters over the next 50 or 100 years, while it will nonetheless face a possibly ever-increasing threat of destruction, at least early on, if time works against a permanent peace instead of for it (e.g., the Iranians get the bomb and Israel’s opponents became emboldened against it)?

All such calculuses are very unhappy ones. Better by far to resolve the whole business with a comprehensive peace now. But such a peace is reachable only if mankind puts aside its historical unreasonableness and sheer stupidity, not to mention its millennia of Jew hating. Sadly, one is not hopeful.*

* This posting represents the personal views of Lawrence R. Velvel. If you wish to respond to this email/blog, please email your response to me at velvel@mslaw.edu. Your response may be posted on the blog if you have no objection; please tell me if you do object.

VelvelOnNationalAffairs is now available as a podcast. To subscribe please visit VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com, and click on the link on the top left corner of the page. Dean Velvel’s podcast can also be found on Itunes or at www.lrvelvel.libsyn.com

The Airheads And Blockheads

July 28, 2006

Re: The Airheads And BlockheadsOn TV And At The UN

From: Dean Lawrence R. VelvelVelvelOnNationalAffairs.com

Dear Colleagues:

I am taking a short amount of time away from writing about Stephen Kinzer’s description of the American sponsored coup against Mossadegh of Iran in 1953, in order to briefly follow up on the posting of June 26th. That blog commented on the fact that it was possible that Hezbollah had been firing from the immediate area around the UN compound where four UN soldiers ultimately were killed by Israeli fire, but that the airhead news media was not asking questions about this possibility although it was quick to carry, over and over again, Kofi Annan’s condemnation of Israel for the killings.

Well, a little more information has now emerged about the discussed possibility. Yesterday an Israeli Ambassador told Paula Zahn of CNN that UN soldiers in the compound had repeatedly emailed Annan that Hezbollah was all around the compound. (I don’t remember the Ambassador’s statement about the emails’ content with exact precision, but I’m confident I have the gist right.) Zahn’s response was a belligerent statement that, nonetheless, the Israelis had been told several times that their shells were endangering the compound. Well, what the hell would one expect when Hezbollah is all around it. Notice that the beautiful blond tv airhead, did not deny what the Ambassador said. Nor did she inquire of the Ambassador, or of Annan or of anyone else as far as I know, whether the emails told Annan that Hezbollah was firing from all around the compound, whether Annan requested Hezbollah to leave the area of the compound, or whether he urged the UN soldiers to leave the compound. Nope. The blond airhead’s only response, echoing the airheaded position of the American media generally, was a belligerent question clearly implying that the area should not have been targeted even though it was being used in some way by Hezbollah - - and was likely being used for firing rockets, I would imagine (especially because of what Hezbollah was doing elsewhere).

More information on the general subject of the UN compounds then was printed in the Boston Globe this morning in a front page article written by a reporter on the scene at a different UN compound, at Naqoura. Outgoing Katusha rockets were “Hezbollah, ‘firing from a position [only] 300 meters away’” from the compound, Colonel Jaques Colleville said, pointing up the hill ‘Now the Israelis will retaliate.’ Ear shattering explosions soon followed as the Israelis replied by shelling the Hezbollah position.” So now we know for sure that Hezbollah is operating very near to UN compounds, and the compound at Naqoura has already been hit twice by Israeli fire, the Globe reported. What has the incompetent (and apparently crooked) Kofi Annan done about this Hezbollah firing (or about similar Hezbollah firings and Israeli counterfirings that, for all we know, may have occurred at other UN compounds too)? Has he demanded that Hezbollah move? Has he simply told the Israelis to stop firing at the area? Has he told the UN people to leave the area? Who knows. (There is a report this morning that UN soldiers are being withdrawn from two outposts. One presumes Hezbollah is all around these two outposts. Do Annan or the UN deny this?)

What is more, what is the incompetent Annan going to do if the Hezbollahs move closer to the UN compound at Naqoura (or elsewhere?), move within 100 yards or 50 yards or 25 yards, which the UN soldiers, as made clear in this morning’s Globe article, are apparently powerless to stop. Is he going to once again accuse Israel of “apparently deliberately” hitting the compound if return fire strikes it (or other compounds)?

Lest one think Hezbollah would not move closer, a story in today’s Times would disabuse of that crazy notion. Christian Lebanese refugees from a village “less than a mile from Bint Jbail,” where the Israelis have been engaging Hezbollah, said Hezbollah fighters came into their village and “were using it as a base to shoot rockets. . . and the Israelis fired back” Hezbollah, said a villager “’are shooting from between our houses.’”(Emphasis added.) That sounds pretty close, huh? Another villager said that Hezbollah had “killed a man who was trying to leave Bint Jbail. ‘This is what’s happening, but no one wants to say it’ for fear of Hezbollah, she said.” It sounds to me like Hezbollah doesn’t want its civilian human shields to up and leave, thereby allowing the Israelis to more vigorously pound the guerrillas. Does this sound like a group that wouldn’t get closer to UN compounds if it thought it had to for safety?

Meanwhile, Kofi Annan merely criticizes Israel, for all we know says nothing to Hezbollah, did not pull out UN troops (although this may be changing) who have been put in danger by Hezbollah’s obviously deliberate positioning (perhaps the troops have been left in place because they are helping in humanitarian work - - which makes Hezbollah’s positioning even more evil), and Annan’s Security Council passes a statement that says the Council is “shocked and distressed” that the Israelis fired at the compound but makes no mention - - none at all - - of the fact that Hezbollah drew the fire by locating itself near the UN positions. And the airheads on American tv have no clue even as to what questions they should be asking of Annan, let alone of Hezbollah, whom they seem rarely even to speak with, if ever.*

_____________________* This posting represents the personal views of Lawrence R. Velvel. If you wish to respond to this email/blog, please email your response to me at velvel@mslaw.edu. Your response may be posted on the blog if you have no objection; please tell me if you do object.

VelvelOnNationalAffairs is now available as a podcast. To subscribe please visit VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com, and click on the link on the top left corner of the page. Dean Velvel’s podcast can also be found on Itunes or at http://www.lrvelvel.libsyn.com/

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Appended is an email, forwarded to me by an old friend, that was written by a citizen of Israel. His name is on it, but I have redacted his address and phone numbers.

Also appended is an article, or email, said to be from a brother of Senator McCain named Joe McCain. I cannot vouch for the provenance. Regardless, the piece resonates with me.*

As I write this I hear the guns.I don’t like guns. Can I do without them?

For the last 35 years we have had to constantly build and rebuild defenses against terrorist infiltration and katyusha rockets coming across the border from Lebanon. It was not a game. Our people were murdered. Schoolchildren were held hostage in their classroom and slain “for the cause”. A rocket fell only too close for comfort in front of my house with shrapnel flying through the walls of our children’s bedroom, glass shattering over them as they slept. Our army fired back, our air force made small punitive answers. We wanted a Lebanese government to control the Fattah groups that were responsible, but the Lebanese government was not functioning while all the ethnic groups in Lebanon were busy fighting and killing each other.

In 1982 the Israeli army went in to do what the Lebanese were unable and unwilling to do: drive the Fattah groups far from the border. Lebanon was still unable to put together a viable government, and the Israeli public was torn between the need to stay in part of southern Lebanon to keep our border safe, and the need to get out and let the Lebanese once more do what they can to govern and control all of Lebanon including the terrorist organizations. To my mind, it is unfortunate that this internal conflict within the Israeli public lasted till the year 1999. Nevertheless, in that year a number of things happened. Israel announced that its army would leave southern Lebanon on the basis of a major requirement: the Lebanese government would take responsibility for the border with Israel, would place its army in southern Lebanon and would disarm the Hezbollah. The Lebanese Government and the United Nations required of Israel to have a U.N. team delineate the exact international border between the two countries. Israel acceded and so it came to pass. The U.N. passed its resolution for Israel to move over the border delineated by its team in order for the Lebanese army to take control of southern Lebanon.

Israel moved out of southern Lebanon, the Lebanese army did not move in. Since then, not only did the Lebanese government totally ignore its responsibility for southern Lebanon, but it allowed the Hezbollah to become the complete controllers of the area with a constant buildup of arms and equipment from Iran through Syria. Rockets kept flying over onto Israeli communities. Attempts and a few successes were made at kidnapping across the border. The Lebanese Government turned a blind eye with hints of approval. The international community puts no pressure whatsoever on the Lebanese to take control of the border and to disarm the terrorist military organization in their midst. The international community does pressure Israel to “stay calm”. Meanwhile the Hezbollah acquire bigger and more far-reaching rockets: an organization called “terrorist” by the non-fundamentalist world, unhampered by any intervention by its host country, blatantly initiating terrorist attempts over the international border, constantly and overtly threatening to use its growing arsenal against my country. I wonder if there is even one country within the “organized countries” of the world that would accede for years to the demand to “stay calm”.

As a rule, Israel did its best to “stay calm” and respond very minimally over these past 6 years since moving back to the international border. Our main plea was to the U.N. and the “Major Powers” to influence the Lebanese government into deploying their army along the border.Two weeks ago, while Israel was already involved with a major kidnapping incident in Gaza, the Hezbollah launched another well planned incursion over the border, killed 3 soldiers, kidnapped 2 soldiers, and then (probably to aid the escape of the kidnappers) opened full fire with rockets and automatic guns at Israeli positions across most of the Lebanese-Israeli border. (keep calm?? O.k. this time it was not a civilian riding a bicycle in the town of Shlomi that was killed by a rocket attack. This time it was only soldiers. Why get so upset?? After all – aren’t soldiers expendable?? No, no, no. our soldiers are there to defend, not to be killed.)

Remember the last straw that broke the camels back? Well, this was a very heavy straw – a baleful. With neither the Lebanese Government, nor the U.N., nor the major European powers, nor the entire gamut of anti-violence organizations, willing to offer any solution for the safety of Israelis from the terrorist threats across the border, our own government had to stop “staying calm” and began the forceful eviction of Hezbollah from southern Lebanon, the destruction of their arsenal and the destruction of their well-developed Beirut Infrastructure.

I am extremely unhappy about this result. I doubt that violence can eradicate violence. For 35 years we have been looking for ways to fend off the terrorism from the Lebanese border. No one has offered a viable solution, other than “stay calm” – essentially turn the other cheek, and prepare for the next slap-in-the-face to be much harder.

You are right. Probably most Lebanese want a cease fire, but their democratic government is unwilling to take responsibility for the border, and unwilling to begin the long hard road of disarming a terrorist organization in its midst. They are very willing for a ceasefire which will leave Israeli citizens still under the threat of terrorist action, while they can turn the other way, free of any responsibility.

You are right. At this juncture probably most Israelis are wary of a ceasefire that will leave the Hezbollah with the continued ability to be a very meaningful threat. Were the Lebanese willing to “take care” of the Hezbollah, I am certain that almost every Israeli would revert once more to “staying calm” and embracing a cease fire.

It therefore seems to me that your comparison of who wants a cease fire and who doesn’t is more than simplistic and naïve. It borders on a demagogic approach to the problem of “how do we defend ourselves” – and not only ourselves. We also have children and grandchildren.

Are we exaggerating?? I hear say that we are using the Hezbollah as a poor excuse for once again “taking Lebanon”, while the Hezbollah are no more than just a small group of extremist terrorists who have no real ability to do damage to life and limb??How simple it is for one to delude oneself.

The Hezbollah are a proven threat by the facts of their past terrorist activities, and by their show of arsenal strength during these last few days. Many people were certain that Israel was exaggerating about the growing arsenal of rockets being stockpiled against Israel. In the past 11 days the Hezbollah have launched over 2000 rockets into Israeli cities, towns and villages. Their range now covers considerably more than the communities within sight of the border, and they openly threaten with even longer ranging rockets. We believe them. Our kibbutz is already pockmarked with a good number of “hits” both within the area of our homes and all around our fields. Most people have chosen to migrate with their children far southward out of the line of fire. So did my own children and grandchildren. A day after they left a rocket landed a few meters from their home and went through the roof of our local grade school. Other rockets continued to land too close for comfort, but those of us still here have gone either underground or into (relatively) secure rooms. The town of Nahariya, just south of us, is less fortunate. People there have been killed by direct hits, and our Hospital is filling up with the injured.

Yes. I know we are much stronger than the Hezbollah and all of Lebanon combined. I know we have weapons and abilities they can not match. I know that therefore we are considered the “bully” and they are the “underdog”. That makes us the bad guys in your eyes while they are the good guys. Which also means by your logic that in the interests of peace and justice we should be willing to cease fire and go back to the way things were: a terrorist organization attacking us at our doorsteps, building up an even larger arsenal supplied by such purely noble countries as Iran and Syria, and hosted by a country whose government sees nothing wrong with such an arrangement and also accepts this fundamentalist terrorist organization into its parliament and government. Thank you very much for supplying such a just solution.

I too would like to silence the guns and “send over sandwiches and clothes instead” to the people who allow, condone and aid the terrorist activities of the Hezbollah. Someone who has no need to protect his own children and grandchildren can deceive himself in seeing this as a solution. It is total delusion regarding the Hezbollah approach to extreme fundamentalist terror.

Now let’s start talking about solutions……………..I have none.I would like to see world pressure on Lebanon to take over southern Lebanon and to disarm the Hezbollah. Unfortunately, world pressure will not come by our “sending over sandwiches”. Perhaps it will come in order to aid western interests (not Lebanese interest) against unbalancing the situation in Lebanon.I would want the return of the kidnapped soldiers.I would want the return to Lebanon of captured terrorists, but only after the disarming of the Hezbollah arsenal and the presence of the Lebanese army in southern Lebanon.I know how difficult it will be to disarm the Hezbollah and that the process may take a long time. Perhaps then, we can engage a settlement on the basis of the Hezbollah announcing unequivocally that they accept the sovereignty of the border as delineated by the United Nations, and will from here on desist from any activity across the border.Then again, there is a very small territory which the U.N. team claims does not belong to Lebanon, but Hezbollah insists on having it transferred to Lebanon. This too can happen in a situation where the Hezbollah are disarmed and affirm their desisting from any further activities across the border along with the guarantee of the Lebanese government.

O.K. how can any of this happen?? Not without the cooperation of the Lebanese government. Till now we have heard no word from them about willingness to deal with the Hezbollah – only their desire for a cease fire. At long last other countries (France, Germany, Turkey and U.S.) are beginning to pressure and negotiate in that direction. I hope it succeeds. We need to stop shooting before it turns us into the same kind of fanatics that are shooting at us.

People are getting hurt even when there is an attempt to single out only Hezbollah activists and helpers. Unfortunately, not everything which looks like Hezbollah from the air is purely Hezbollah on the ground. These are the difficulties of fighting a terrorist organization that purposefully spins much of its webs within the normal fabric of civilian life. True, the result is such that many rules of “fair” fighting are lost when having to fight terrorists within a civilian population that gives it comfort and shelter. Also, the figures you hear about from Lebanon don’t tell you how many of the casualties are Hezbollah. They haven’t been interested in giving out that information, therefore all casualties are “civilians” only. I wish there were no casualties at all. But after being unwilling to stop terror from Lebanon into Israel, the Lebanese government somewhat reminds me of the young man who murdered his parents and asked the judge for mercy because he is now an orphan. Somehow I wonder what kind of letters you send to Lebanon to the supporters of said “orphan”.

One day a week I have been going into the West Bank to the Palestinian village of Sa’alem near Nablus to protect them against possible harassment by Israeli settlers who I hope will be moved out of their homes soon, like those moved out of Gaza. I do that because I believe the settlers have infringed on the land of legitimate owners and have no right being there, and in any case are morally corrupt in condoning the harassment of other human beings on the basis of their own type of religious fundamentalism.

But the Hezbollah are another story. They want my legitimate home and I’m willing to fight for my home. They want to propel katyushas onto my grandchildren. I can’t allow them the opportunity to do that. This is my basic emotional instinct. I imagine I shall never be a total pacifist. I believe in defending myself as best I can when I run into an enemy whose sole purpose is my demise. I then accept the penalty of being called a “bully” by those who are unwilling or unable to help me protect my grandchildren in other ways.

Of course, at the moment at which I thought our government was attempting to go beyond the necessity of disabling the Hezbollah and the terrorist threat, I will join many other Israelis in public protest. It seems to me that time has not arrived. By the way, I never saw any viable public protest in Lebanon against the actions of the Hezbollah as hosted by the Lebanese government.

Therefore, Oak, I will not spread your message. I have my own. And yes, I think you’ve got it all wrong. Please don’t misunderstand. Your heart is in the right place. But the situation you relate to is at best segmented and at worst – tainted.

Be well and continue working for peace. I shall too.

Aaron Sharif

Senator John McCain's brother on The Jews & Israel.There is a lot of worry popping up in the media just now -- "Can IsraelSurvive?" Don't worry about it. It relates to something that Palestinians,the Arabs, and perhaps most Americans don't realize -- the Jews are nevergoing quietly again. Never. And if the world doesn't come to understandthat, then millions of Arabs are going to die. It's as simple as that.Throughout the history of the world, the most abused, kicked-around race ofpeople have been the Jews. Not just during the holocaust of World War II,but for thousands of years. They have truly been "The Chosen People" in aterrible and tragic sense.The Bible story of Egypt's enslavement of the Jews is not just a story, itis history, if festooned with theological legend and heroic epics. In 70A.D. the Romans, which had for a long time tolerated the Jews -- evenadmired them as 'superior' to other vassals -- tire d of their truculentdemands for independence and decided on an early "Solution" to the Jewishproblem. Jerusalem was sacked and reduced to near rubble, Jewish resistancewas pursued and crushed by the implacable Roman War Machine -- see 'Masada'.And thus began the Diaspora, the dispersal of Jews throughout the rest ofthe world.Their homeland destroyed, their culture crushed, they looked desperately forthe few niches in a hostile world where they could be safe. That safety wasfragile, and often subject to the whims of moody hosts. The words 'pogrom','ghetto', and 'anti-Semitism' come from this treatment of the firstmono-theistic people. Throughout Europe, changing times meant sometimestolerance, sometimes even warmth for the Jews, but eventually it meanthostility, then malevolence. There is not a country in Europe or WesternAsia that at one time or another has not decided to lash out against thechildren of Moses, sometimes b y whim, sometimes by manipulation.Winston Churchill calls Edward I one of England's very greatest kings. Itwas under his rule in the late 1200's that Wales and Cornwall were hammeredinto the British crown, and Scotland and Ireland were invaded and occupied.He was also the first European monarch to set up a really effectiveadministrative bureaucracy, surveyed and censured his kingdom, establishedlaws and political divisions. But he also embraced the Jews.Actually Edward didn't embrace Jews so much as he embraced their money. Forthe English Jews had acquired wealth -- understandable, because this peoplethat could not own land or office, could not join most of the trades andprofessions, soon found out that money was a very good thing to accumulate.Much harder to take away than land or a store, was a hidden sock of gold andsilver coins. Ever resourceful, Edward found a way -- he borrowed money fromthe Jews to finance imperial a mbitions in Europe, especially France.The loans were almost certainly not made gladly, but how do you refuse yourKing? Especially when he is 'Edward the Hammer'. Then, rather than pay backthe debt, Edward simply expelled the Jews. Edward was especially inventive-- he did this twice. After a time, he invited the Jews back to theirEnglish homeland, borrowed more money, then expelled them again.Most people do not know that Spain was one of the early entrants into TheRenaissance. People from all over the world came to Spain in the latemedieval period. All were welcome -- Arabs, Jews, other Europeans. TheUniversity of Salamanca was one of the great centers of learning in theworld -- scholars of all nations, all fields came to Salamanca to sharetheir knowledge and their ideas. But in 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella, havingdriven the last of Moors from the Spanish Shield, were persuaded by therighteous fundamentalists of the tim e to announce "The Act of Purification".A series of steps were taken in which all Jews and Arabs and othernon-Christians were expelled from the country, or would face the tools andthe torches of The Inquisition. From this 'cleansing' come the SephardicJews -- as opposed to the Ashkenazi's of Eastern Europe. In Eastern Europe,the sporadic violence and brutality against Jews are common knowledge.'Fiddler' without the music and the folksy humor. At times of fury, noaccommodation by the Jew was good enough, no profile low enough, no villagepoor enough or distant enough.From these come the near-steady flow of Jews to the United States. Anddespite the disdain of the Jews by most 'American' Americans, they came tograb the American Dream with both hands, and contributed everything from newideas of enterprise in retail and entertainment to becoming some of ourfinest physicians and lawyers. The modern United States, in spite of itself,<>is The United States in part because of its Jewish blood.Then the Nazi Holocaust -- the corralling, sorting, orderly eradication ofmillions of the people of Moses. Not something that other realms in othertimes didn't try to do, by the way, the Germans were just more organized andhad better murder technology.I stood in the center of Dachau for an entire day, about 15 years ago,trying to comprehend how this could have happened. I had gone there on aside trip from Munich, vaguely curious about this Dachau. I soon becameengulfed in the enormity of what had occurred there nestled in this middleand working class neighborhood.How could human beings do this to other human beings, hear their cries,their pleas, their terror, their pain, and continue without apparently evenwincing? I no longer wonder. At some times, some places, ANY sect of thehuman race is capable of horrors against their fellow man, whether a memberof th e Waffen SS, a Serbian sniper, a Turkish policeman in 1920's Armenia, aMississippi Klansman. Because even in the United States not all was a RoseGarden.For a long time Jews had quotas in our universities and graduate schools.Only so many Jews could be in a medical or law school at one time. Jews weredisparaged widely. I remember as a kid Jewish jokes told without a wince -"Why do Jews have such big noses?"Well, now the Jews have a homeland again. A place that is theirs. And that'sthe point. It doesn't matter how many times the United States and Europeanpowers try to rein in Israel, if it comes down to survival of its nation,its people, they will fight like no lioness has ever fought to save hercubs.They will fight with a ferocity, a determination, and a skill, that willastound us.And many will die, mostly their attackers, I believe. If there were amacabre historical betting parlor, my money would be on the Isra el is to bestanding at the end. As we killed the kamikazes and the Wehrmacht soldatenof World War II, so will the Israelis kill their suicidal attackers, untilthere are not enough to torment them.The irony goes unnoticed -- while we are hammering away to punish those whobrought the horrors of September 11th here, we restrain the Israelis fromthe same retaliation. Not the same thing, of course -- We are We, They areThey. While we mourn and seethe at September 11th, we don't notice thatIsrael has a September 11th sometimes every day.We may not notice, but it doesn't make any difference. And it doesn't makeany difference whether you are pro-Israeli or you think Israel is the bullyof the Middle East. If it comes to where a new holocaust looms -- with orwithout the concurrence of the United States and Europe -- Israel will lashout without pause or restraint at those who would try to annihilate theircountry.The Jews wil l not go quietly again.Joe McCain* * This posting represents the personal views of Lawrence R. Velvel. If you wish to respond to this email/blog, please email your response to me at velvel@mslaw.edu. Your response may be posted on the blog if you have no objection; please tell me if you do object.

VelvelOnNationalAffairs is now available as a podcast. To subscribe please visit VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com, and click on the link on the top left corner of the page. Dean Velvel’s podcast can also be found on Itunes or at www.lrvelvel.libsyn.com

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

The UN Observers

July 26, 2006

Re: The UN Observers

From: Dean Lawrence R. VelvelVelvelOnNationalAffairs.com

Dear Colleagues:

If all goes as planned, this author shall write a piece tomorrow, Thursday, on Iran and the current war in Lebanon. (Today is given over to taping a one hour television show with the author of The Global Class War, Jeff Faux, and to talks by the author to our faculty at lunch and to citizens of our area this evening.)

Like many others, this writer has spent some time -- in my own case about 45 minutes to an hour per day – watching cable news programs about the fighting in Lebanon. (I have been watching CNN.) One of course sees and hears the same things over and over and over and over again, including repeated interviews about and discussions of the deaths of four UN observers. Kofi Annan’s initial statement accused Israel of “apparently deliberately” targeting the observers. Israel has denied this. Annan later backed off his claim of apparent deliberate intent. But the good looking airheads who are television anchors and reporters for CNN seems never to think of asking the obvious and deeply relevant questions about this matter. To wit, just how close or just how far from the UN post are Hezbollah positions: rocket launchers, bunkers, entrenchments, observation posts, etc. It strikes me that we would have one likely situation if they are within 50 or 100 yards of the UN observation post, and probably a much different situation if they are, say, 3500 yards away (or approximately 2 miles away). Similarly, is it possible that Hezbollah personnel actually were using the UN’s “grounds” or “installation” to do their own observing (or even to launch rockets?).

These questions seem quintessentially simple, do they not? Yet they are never asked. Nor, is it ever said, relatedly, that Hezbollah’s positions or installations are far from the UN observation post rather than close to it. Indeed, the only thing I think I have heard on this score is an interviewee saying very cursorily that Hezbollah positions are close to the UN observation post. But the television airheads seem not to pursue this matter. Nor have I read any information on this question in any print media, almost equally the home of airheads.

Maybe I have simply been missing discussion of the matter on the electronic media or in print, and, if so, should to some extent apologize and eat my words. But the fact remains that I personally have seen virtually nothing on the subject.

One last point. Why haven’t the Israelis themselves brought up the matter? If Hezbollah positions were close by the UN outpost, one would think the Israelis would have said so. But on the other hand, if the Hezbollah positions were nowhere near the UN installation, one would think that Kofi Annan and other UN spokesmen would have said that. What gives?** * This posting represents the personal views of Lawrence R. Velvel. If you wish to respond to this email/blog, please email your response to me at velvel@mslaw.edu. Your response may be posted on the blog if you have no objection; please tell me if you do object.

VelvelOnNationalAffairs is now available as a podcast. To subscribe please visit VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com, and click on the link on the top left corner of the page. Dean Velvel’s podcast can also be found on Itunes or at www.lrvelvel.libsyn.com

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Re: U.S., Israel and Lebanon

I agree with much, nearly all, of what you say. But Israel was not occupying Lebanon; it had withdrawn. Hezbollah was raining rockets on Israel, however.

Sincerely yours,

Lawrence Velvel

----- Original Message -----From: john stepplingTo: velvel@mslaw.eduSent: Tuesday, July 25, 2006 4:06 AMSubject: isreal and US and lebanonMr Velvel:I agree with you often.....mostly all the time. But I want to point out that in your discussion of the current israeli attack on lebanon, you seem to buy into the Huntington thesis about the clash of civilizations. This smacks of orientalism at the least, and bigotry at the worst.....and a-historicism.

The forces of islamic fundamentalism seem rather small compared with the Imperial forces of the west. We see this in Lebanon (Lebanese deaths outnumber Israeli about ten to one) and we see this in Iraq. What is the "real" threat from fundamentalists (Islamic that is, not Christians like Bush)?

Im afraid I dont see much. The US defense budget is around 2 billion dollars a day. This should point out the disparity. So when you suggest that islamic reactionaries must be discouraged, I wonder what you mean? Discouraged from what, exactly?

From attacking colonial forces that occupy their country and pillage their land?Discouraged from trying to protect family and friends?

Im afraid I find little to worry about in terms of Muslim attacks......but I do fear the madness of Imperial America (and its subcontracting of israel). The two hundred some year history of colonialism hasnt yet ended. Its good to remember this. Western paternalism is a slippery slope (to indulge a cliche) in that military intervention becomes accepted......for their own good, etc etc etc. Its never for anyone's good ---except maybe defense contractors and oil oligarchs.

Monday, July 24, 2006

Re: The United States, Israel and Lebanon

July 25, 2006

Re: The United States, Israel and Lebanon.

From: Dean Lawrence R. VelvelVelvelOnNationalAffairs.com

Dear Colleagues:

The questions of why Israel is taking the actions it is in fact taking in Lebanon, the reaction of the United States, and the extent to which the two countries are acting in concert – and/or may even have secretly conferred beforehand? -- are extremely interesting. This writer wishes to offer a few views of possibilities, often possibilities that the media has largely, or totally, ignored.

Israel has said it wants to recover its two soldiers capture by Hezbollah -- and, now forgotten by our incompetent media, the one previously captured by Hamas. As far as I know, it does not say if it even knows whether the soldiers are still alive (though one briefly stated sentence on CNN claimed the Lebanese (I think) foreign minister has said one of the two Hezbollah captives is alive and well). Despite the Israeli silence it has occasionally been pointed out that the concern for and premium Israelis place on the life of every serviceman and woman is not really understood by the west (much less in the Arab world, India, China or other such places). Perhaps one has to be a member of a group which lives with the memory of the Holocaust -- which we have long known the western democracies did not lift a finger to stop -- to really understand it.

Yet, the large-scale destruction all over Lebanon hardly seems the way to get back the soldiers. Arguably, it might even increase the possibility that they will be killed if they are still alive. So one goes to the second Israeli reason given for the war and, more particularly, for the massive destruction. This is the elimination or at least severe degradation of Hezbollah as an armed force. One’s reaction as to the possible success here is, “well, maybe.” I would concede that there is a possibility -- conceivably even a likelihood -- that the Israelis may be far more competent in southern Lebanon, on their border, and in Beirut, not far distant, than we were in Nam or Iraq, thousands of miles away, in both of which our politicians and military were perfectly incompetent. (I regard dishonesty and incompetence, both of which attended our efforts in Nam and Iraq, as the gravest causative sins of the modern world since 1960.) But even granted the possibility, even likelihood, that the Israelis are far more competent than we, the question of their success is still in doubt as this is written: rockets rain on Israel, Hezbollah (or Hizbullah, take your pick) still fights (fiercely, according to the latest reports), is said to still have 11,000 more rockets, and we don’t know whether or not the Israelis managed to knock off any of its top people with the famous 23 tons of bunkerbusting bombs. (The very top leader, Hassan Nasralla, was not killed, and subsequently appeared on al-Jazeera.)

The Israelis also say they wish to force Hezbollah to retreat from the border a sufficient distance so that it can no longer rain rockets on Israel. Well, to some extent this may be doable, because it is perfectly conceivable that the international community -- perhaps NATO -- will decide to station a force in, say, a ten mile deep strip on the border with orders to keep Hezbollah out. That would be major. Yet it won’t solve all problems, because Hezbollah now has some rockets that apparently will go 40 to 60 miles. Perhaps it could get a large arsenal of them and begin shooting them. Then what?

George Bush and Condoleezza Rice, those swinish architects of horrendous disaster in Iraq, do not wish an immediate cease fire. They keep saying, as does Israel, that the cause of the problem -- Hezbollah (ignoring, as Bush puts it, the Syrians who started this shit, and the Iranians who are fundamentally responsible for it) -- must be placed in a position where it will no longer be a problem. Well, that might be difficult because, in practical terms, Hezbollah is a stand-in for both Iran and Syria. As long as those two countries continue to want there to be a problem, it is likely that there will be a problem.

So why does Bush really want the fighting to continue? There are several possibilities. One is that, as he has proven so often, Bush is a stupid, militaristic (and authoritarian) fool who does not mind in the slightest seeing people killed -- as long as it’s not his family -- and who thinks that through this kind of thing will come peace, stability and security (subnom Iraq). One should not underestimate Bush’s militarism or stupidity. As for Rice, the woman never had an original idea in her life. She’s great at learning what’s in books, and her most important talent in life has been the ability to suck around Bush. (Colin Powell she’s not.)Then, too, there is another possible reason why Bush didn’t want the fighting to stop right away. Bush has had a complete lack of success in dealing with Iran. There is no way he has been or will be able to peacefully persuade Iran not to produce nuclear weapons (just as he has totally failed to persuade North Korea). Looking at what has happened in Iraq and elsewhere, the Iranians have to be of a mind that the only way to be certain to avoid an American attack in the future is to possess their own nuclear deterrent. That’s sure as hell what I would think if I were them. As well, it is widely bruited in public that we would not be able to destroy Iran’s nuclear capacity because the sites are dispersed, deep underground, very hardened, etc.So what to do? Well, one thing to do is to show the Iranians that, even if we can’t destroy their nuclear development work, we can certainly destroy their country. From the air, we can reduce it to rubble, and damn quick too. What is more, and as true for Syria too, we would want to show the Iranians and Syrians that their countries can be destroyed from the air if they continue to sponsor terrorism. (The same lesson might well apply to our so-called friends like the Pakistanis, even the Saudis.) What better way to show these countries that conventional bombing can destroy everything, and quickly too, than to have the Israelis rain destruction on Lebanon, reducing it in short order to an international basket case, which is about what has happened. The Iranians and Syrians, even the Pakistanis and the Saudis will take notice. If they are too stupid to take notice, their attention can be called to it in the “halls” and “channels” of diplomacy.In addition, the rain of country-wide destruction from the air will show ordinary citizens within these countries that, much as they may hate and despise and wish for the destruction of America, Israel and the west, it is extremely dangerous, is fraught with destruction, to harbor organizations like Hezbollah, Hamas and al Qaeda in their midst. Guerrillas, said Mao, are the fish that swim in the sea, with the citizenry being the sea. A point could be to make the sea decide to be inhospitable to the fish.All of this may not be as entirely crazy as it can sound. It does begin to look these days as if, ala Sam Huntington, there is a segment of Muslim society that seeks religiously-based confrontation with the west, and desires the world to return to the (pre medieval?) and certainly preenlightenment times of the 600s and 700s. My personal view is that, even if this is true, it most likely is, in effect, a reaction to the crusader and imperialistic occupation and economic control of the Middle East by Britain, France and the United States from the mid or latter part of the 19th Century until today. Nonetheless, it is important to somehow discourage the Muslim reverse crusaders, and one way to do this would be to have Israel show that, notwithstanding the horrific American conduct and gross American incompetence in Iraq, the west, with its advanced munitions and delivery systems, retains the power to wreak havoc if there is not to be peace.I’m not saying this is the best idea on how to deal with the wave of Muslim- fundamentalist-sponsored terrorism now besetting the world. I don’t presently have a view on what is the best way, although – and only the more so because major western military campaigns seem to create ever more Muslim terrorists-- my own taste runs quite a bit more to negotiation and attempts at multilateral efforts than is true of the fool in the White House. All I am saying is that the idea that Bush might be using Israel as a proxy to show what the west can do to Muslim societies is not completely crazy, particularly in view of how Bush himself has botched the job in Iraq and therefore needs to show that the west is nonetheless quite powerful.One last point. All eyes are currently on Lebanon and Hezbollah. But it has to be only a question of time until attention turns back to Hamas and Gaza, doesn’t it? If there is to be some form of settlement or resolution of the current situation, the Gaza problem has to be included, doesn’t it?*

* This posting represents the personal views of Lawrence R. Velvel. If you wish to respond to this email/blog, please email your response to me at velvel@mslaw.edu. Your response may be posted on the blog if you have no objection; please tell me if you do object.

VelvelOnNationalAffairs is now available as a podcast. To subscribe please visit VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com, and click on the link on the top left corner of the page. Dean Velvel’s podcast can also be found on Itunes or at http://www.lrvelvel.libsyn.com/

Re: The One Percent Doctrine.

Dear Dean VelvelI think it is fair to say that we are returning to the Medieval period. One actually has to ask why the Roman Catholic Church even bothered to take Galileo off the Index during JPII's pontificate. Maybe that was just a bureaucratic oversight. It was supposed to be removed in the early 19th century but by the time the Curia got around to submitting the decision for papal approval...In any event I think it is fair to say that never more than 20% of the "white" inhabitants of the US have lived in that period commonly called the Enlightenment. Substantial numbers of those who did were deported for being Communists or Anarchists. I consciously do not include Afro-Americans because it would be impertinent to criticise "forced Americans" for living in the late medieval period of their masters. The remainder of the "white citizenry" never progressed culturally beyond the level prevailing before the Thirty Years War. Now I do not want to assert uncritically any doctrine of human progress but, if there were such a thing and it were driven by the belief in the ideals of Renaissance humanism and ultimately the Rights of Man (e.g. as espoused so eloquently by Thomas Paine), then it is fair to say that such human progress has eluded the USA in toto. Whatever progress has emerged has been despite the USA not because of it.George Bush is truly medieval but then the entire US political culture of white America is medieval. It has only substituted the USA for the Roman Catholic Church as the only means to salvation.I do not write this just to make glib polemic-- although as a wordsmith I do enjoy when I manage to say something at least thought provoking. I just think that that the perhaps 20% of that 20% of the white US population that still has access to public media has to realise that we are well headed toward the third world war US anti-communist doctrine was supposed to prevent. The US government has long ago left the terrain of the "secular political" (always a very tenuous position in the US anyway). I am afraid the only way that a world war can be prevented is if there is a "Reformation" and "Peasant Revolt" in the US which forces the North American curia and hierarchy to concentrate its energies on domestic peace.If the critical forces in the US do not start to realise that the US government is controlled by a medieval religious institution that has to be met with "religious" weapons, then we here will be looking for the means to clean up the waste which the US is going to make of the rest of the world-- to protect its faith."Washington books" are the products of medieval theological disputation. The intelligence debate is also like the question of "how many angels can dance on a pinhead". Maybe the USA could catch up with the rest of the world with French Revolution re-enactments instead of the reactionary Civil War nostalgia. Just think that might bring a few more Americans up to the end of the 18th century! Now wouldn't that be progress.Wishing you well. And hoping that we do not have to remember Vera Lynn.Dr. WilkinsonAm 19.07.2006 um 17:37 schrieb velvel@mslaw.edu:

July 19, 2006

Re: The One Percent Doctrine.

From: Dean Lawrence R. VelvelVelvelOnNationalAffairs.com

Dear Colleagues:

Ron Suskind’s The One Percent Doctrine is not a good book. It’s a Washington book. There’s a big difference.

Washington books are a genre that started, I think, about 50 years ago with Alan Drury’s Advise And Consent. Drury’s work was a novel and, if memory serves, some other novels followed in its train. Then, in the 1970s and ’80s, the Washington book morphed into the kind of works written by Bob Woodward, books that tell you in excruciating dull detail more about everything than you want to know about anything. Washington books became a kind of who shot John work detailing that at 9 a.m. Ted told X to Paul, who at 9:15 relayed it to Sam but changed it slightly when doing so, with Sam then telling the undersecretary who immediately ordered an airplane to fuel up and then got on the plane with General Smashskull, who was for taking out Mr. Z as soon as possible, but the plane returned to the tarmac before taking off because the Secretary herself had heard incorrectly that General Smashskull was a good friend of Z’s and would protect him, and by the time all this was straightened out Z had escaped to Swaziland, where a green 1993 Land Rover was waiting to take him to the molybdenum mine where he secretly met with Ted’s undercover agent Yabbadabba, who later took a slow freighter back to Baltimore where Sam, having uncovered Ted’s duplicity, had three counter-counter agents waiting to -- well, you get the point.

Being a Washington book, the points Suskind wishes to make are not always crystalline, because they are spread here and there in the book and the writing is sometimes sort of wiseacreish or smart mouthed or patois-like rather than straight on. (I really don’t know how to accurately describe the style of writing: wiseacreish and smart mouthed and patois-like are not exactly accurate but are the best I can do.) And sometimes, as best I can tell, Suskind seems to be discussing the same events hundreds of pages apart without being entirely clear that they are the same events. Even so, however, he does make many points that I wish to summarize here because this writer finds them particularly important, or because they are new, or because they seem to be at risk of being overlooked in all the other “noise” that permeates Suskind’s pages, or because they confirm somewhat unusual thoughts this writer himself has put forth from time to time. (Scores or hundreds of other points are not summarized here, sometimes because they have been extensively discussed elsewhere (e.g., the failure of cooperation between the FBI and CIA).)

1. Suskind repeatedly says that a governing principle of the Bush administration, a principle pushed extensively by Cheney, is that if there is a one percent chance that terrorists or enemies may try something, then we must act as if it is a certainty. (Pp. 62, 81, 166, 170, 214.) This frees Bush et al. from having to assess competing evidence. It frees them indeed from even having to act on evidence as opposed to suspicion or hunch, since there is always a one percent chance of almost anything. This freedom from evidence is a freedom Bush seeks. (Pp. 62, 81, 170, 214, 225-226, 308.) As well, it helps elide a major Bush weakness -- ineptitude at analysis (sometimes called stupidity by mean people like this writer) -- and enables Bush to act on the basis of his gut and the (religion inspired) attitude with which he is comfortable. (P. 308.) Persons who are old fashioned, i.e., who believe in analyzing competing pieces of evidence, and in acting on evidence as opposed to emotion (like the CIA), find that their reports are not read, that their oral views are ignored, and that they are excluded from the inner circle. (P. 308.) Although lots of evidence-oriented people in government haven’t understood the point, Bush doesn’t want to hear rational analysis of competing pieces of evidence, because this just confuses him and undercuts the certitude with which he wishes to act.

We are, one would say, in the hands of people whose thinking is preenlightenment, is a throwback to medieval religious certitude instead of being evidence-based. This does not, of course, distinguish us from enemies like Islamic fundamentalists -- the bin Ladens, Imams, and Wahabists.

2. In personal intercourse Bush assesses people not on the basis of what they say, but visually -- on their body English, on whether they appear certain of what they say. (In this respect he looks for the certainty that lawyers display even when they don’t know what they are talking about, which is not uncommon.) This is a real problem when someone with important views is not a person who has a highly confident, good ol’ boy, “it’s a slam dunk” type of physical presentation. Bush’s failure or inability to judge what people are actually saying, as opposed to their physical presentation, can create real trouble. For instance, Bush not only got the famous memo of August 6, 2001 warning of possible al Qaeda attacks, but was briefed orally on the problem by someone from the CIA. As I understand what Suskind is saying, one reason Bush ignored what this CIA person had to say was that the guy did not have the confident, “I am certain of everything,” type of persona that Bush looks for. (Pp. 1-2.) (It should be noted that Suskind’s book seems very pro CIA. He feels, I think, that the CIA tries to look for, and advise and act on the basis of, evidence, including careful analysis of competing evidence. This, not the administration’s evidence-free method of acting, is what Suskind admires.)

3. As I understand it, another reason Bush ignored what the CIA briefer had to say was that he (Bush) was fixated on getting Saddam Hussein, and was paying no attention to al Qaeda. Bush came into office with a strong desire to take out Saddam, and intended to do so from day one. Only Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld knew that this was the plan. (Pp. 22-23, 25-26, 296, 306.)

4. Bush, Franks and other top officials were warned that, although bin Laden was surrounded on three sides in Tora Bora, the fourth side, the back door, was open. They were advised -- maybe “begged” would be an even more apt word -- to send marines to close off the fourth side. They refused. Bin Laden escaped. (Pp. 58-59.)

5. The CIA strongly believes that there are about a hundred or so suitcase sized nuclear weapons produced by the Soviet Union that are unaccounted for. (P. 6.) Bin Laden and other terrorists are eager to obtain such a weapon. (Ibid.) We also learned that al Qaeda was able to make very high quality, very deadly anthrax (pp. 212, 251-252), and that it had created a device, sort of like two paint cans, that could be used to create and release hydrogen cyanide, a deadly poison gas. (Pp. 194-195.) (Zyklon B, used by the Germans in the holocaust gas ovens, is a form of hydrogen cyanide.) (P. 195.) The government also found high quality al Qaeda reports with drawings, maps, etc., of buildings, banks, hotels, and other American targets which al Qaeda had cased. (P. 252.)

As one might expect from all this, our government was terrified of what might happen. It considered that the homeland is, in reality, unprotectable. (Pp. 186, 212, 270.)

6. We have had at least one, and I think Suskind is discussing two, high level al Qaeda informants who gave us information and, in one case, enabled us to catch a major al Qaeda fugitive, Khalid Sheik Mohammed. (Pp. 204-206.) For doing this the informant and his family were put in what seems to be the equivalent of a witness protection plan in the U.S. and the informant collected 25 million dollars plus other financial benefits. (Pp. 204-206.) (This was before an informant gave us Zarqawi, for which he is doubtlessly collecting 25 million also (unless -- and this is my own speculation -- al Qaeda possibly wanted Zarqawi dead because he was causing too much trouble for it by killing Muslims in Iraq and was a threat to the leadership of bin Laden).)

7. Bush knew very well that the rapprochement (if one can call it that) with Gadhafi was not due to the invasion of Iraq, but to Gadhafi’s longstanding desire to be accepted in and a player among the family of nations. Yet Bush lied by telling the public that the rapprochement was due to the invasion. (Pp. 221-223, 264-271.)

8. Bush and other high officials knew very well that top al Qaeda guys were being tortured. Bush had made clear that he wanted this done, and even asked the CIA whether the horrible methods it was using were getting any information. (Pp. 75-76, 152, see 164.) Those methods did not in fact get much worthwhile information, if I understand Suskind aright. (Pp. 228-229.) The torturers even threatened one top al Qaeda leader, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, that they would kill his wife and children unless he talked, but not even this worked. (He said that, if the CIA did so, they would simply be in a better place earlier.) (P. 230.)

One guy we tortured, Abu Zubaydah, was paraded to the American public by Bush as a top operational guy and, indeed, was paraded as possibly the number three guy in al Qaeda. In fact, we knew by then that he was not a top guy. We knew that, apparently because of a severe head wound suffered in fighting the Russians earlier on, Zubaydah was a schizoid -- he had a three-part personality (p. 95). As a CIA man on the case said, ‘“This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality,’” (p. 100.), and we knew he was merely “a logistics man, a fixer, mostly for a niggling array of personal items, like the guy you call who handles the company health plan, or benefits, or the people in human resources. There was almost nothing ‘operational’ in his portfolio. That was handled by the management team. He wasn’t one of them.” (P. 95.)

When we first caught Abu Zubaydah, he could not be interrogated because he had been very badly wounded in several places when captured. So the CIA secretly descended on some of the top doctors in the country -- Suskind does not give even a hint as to who they are -- and transported them to Pakistan to provide care to Zubaydah. They nursed him back to health, so that we could then torture him to try to get information (‘“He received the finest medical attention on the planet,’ said one CIA official. ‘We got him in very good health, so we could start to torture him.’” (P. 100.) He gave little information of any value (except for the name of Jose Padilla), but when he said al Qaeda planned to blow up banks or supermarkets, our government would go into panic mode. (Pp. 115-116.) As Suskind put it, “the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.” (P. 111.)

9. Bush could make false statements to the public about Zubaydah and other matters because the government kept everything very secret, so nobody had any facts with which to contest the lies that Bush and his administration were putting out. (Pp. 99, 226, 293.) (“[K]nowledge of Zubaydah’s limited role in al Qaeda, and apparent insanity, was closely held and deeply classified.” (P. 169.)) (The general secrecy that prevented people from having information with which to contest lies is very much like the situation regarding Bush’s initial claims of WMDs back in 2002-3, isn’t it? And were it not for revelations in the news media in the last few years about everything from horrendous legal memos to torture to rendition to electronic spying to killing civilians, nothing would have changed.)

10. The Bush administration, as we all know, is accusing The New York Times of treason. My view is that this fundamentally is because The Times has been the main engine of blowing the whistle on so many of the administration’s misdeeds. (The Washington Post has been up there too.) Most recently, The Times, The Journal and the LA Times blew the whistle on electronic financial tracking. But al Qaeda realized a long time ago that its members were being caught because of financial tracking of one kind or another. So it stopped moving money and messages in the ordinary ways (e.g., emails, cell phone calls, wire transfers, Western Union transfers), and started sending messages by courier and money by halawas -- a type of pervasive, Islamic-world storefront bank, I gather. (Pp. 277-279.) As Suskind puts it, “Eventually, and not surprisingly, our opponents figured it out. It was a matter, really, of deduction. Enough people get caught and a view of which activities they had in common provides clues as to how they may have been identified and apprehended. ‘We were surprised it took them so long, said one senior intelligence official.”’ (P. 279.)

11. Knowing that the homeland is indefensible, Bush and his cohorts wanted to draw terrorists into Iraq, so that they would all be in one place, where our powerful conventional army could fight them all. (Pp. 273-274.) Many Muslims have gone to Iraq to fight us, so, in that sense, Bush has himself created a link between Iraq and terrorism. (Unhappily though, there seem to be even more terrorists, both in Iraq and elsewhere, being produced by the war in Iraq. And lots of them, it is widely felt, are getting excellent training in Iraq for action elsewhere.)

In addition Bush felt that Iraq could serve as an object lesson to other countries that they had better not act contrary to the interests of the United States. (Pp. 214, 264.) (This seems to be somewhat like Nixon’s view that it would be helpful if the North Viet Namese thought he was a madman, because this would cause them to seek peace.) Bush lied to the public in this connection by telling it that because of Iraq, Gadhafi of Libya gave up on seeking WMDs. The truth, as mentioned above, and as the administration knew, was that the reason Gadhafi did so was because for years he had wanted to be accepted by and a player in the international community. But because everything in the administration was so secretive, Bush could lie about this with impunity. (Pp. 221-223, 264-271.)

12. The American shelling of Al Jazeera’s offices in Baghdad was intentional. (Pp. 137-138.) It was not the accident or mistake we pretended it was. Rather we had deliberately sent Al Jazeera a message. (Recently, I note, an official memo got leaked in Britain which said that Bush had (shockingly) suggested to Tony Blair that Al Jazeera should be bombed. This has not received much attention in the U.S.)

13. The intelligence services of the western world have a meeting once a year to discuss matters, to coordinate efforts, and to foster cooperation. (Pp. 82-87.) Each (or lots) of these services engage in electronic spying on other country’s citizens. But there are laws which prevent them from spying on their own citizens. What they do, therefore, if I understand Suskind rightly, is that they spy on each other’s citizens and then exchange information, thus evading their own countries’ bans against spying on their own citizens. (Pp. 85-86.)

This matter, it seems to me, is of obvious relevance to the scandals in our country about the NSA spying on U.S. citizens. Even if that were stopped, the U.S. government could -- and does? -- have other countries spy on American citizens for it.

14. The guy who planned the 2005 London subway bombings, Mohammed Sidique Khan, was under deep suspicion a few years earlier -- in 2003 I gather, although the date is not perfectly clear. We received word that he was coming to the U.S. We could have let him come here, and then followed him closely every minute of every day. He doubtlessly would have led us to others in America who were involved in terrorism. Instead, after several days of dithering about what to do, we put him on a no fly list, so that when the got to Heathrow he was told he could not go to the United States. Thus alerted that he was under suspicion, he knew not to do anything that would arouse suspicion, not to send incriminating emails or make incriminating phone calls. Instead he worked very quietly until he masterminded the 2005 subway bombings. (Pp. 200-203.)

15. In late 2004 DICK Cheney wanted the CIA to release a small part of a classified report that would lead one to the conclusion that the war in Iraq was aiding in the battle against jihadists. The report as a whole “concluded nothing of the sort. Many of its conclusions flowed in the opposite direction. To release that small segment would be willfully misleading.” (P. 340.) So a high CIA official declined Cheney’s request. DICK then expressed outrage to George’s man Porter Goss, who put pressure on the official. She still refused. “A few weeks after that, she was gone.” (P. 341.) We now know of course, due to revelations connected to the Plame/Wilson business, that misleading partial declassification is par for the pack of liars who are the administration.

16. A person “tied tightly into al Qaeda management” had somehow become a source for us. (He thought bin Laden may have made a major mistake in attacking us on 9/11, a subject which was a subject of debate in al Qaeda in early 2003.) In early 2003 he told us that a figure in al Qaeda had planned a major hydrogen cyanide attack in the New York City subway, which had been thoroughly cased by members of the attacking cell. There were only 45 days left before the attack when al Qaeda’s number two man, Ayman al Zawahiri, whom our government wants to catch or kill as much as Bin Laden, “had called off the attacks.” (P. 218, emphasis in original.) The informant did not know why Zawahiri had called them off. Much time was spent speculating, by Bush, Cheney, the CIA, etc., but there was no answer. (Pp. 216-220.)

About a year and a half later, on October 29, 2004, just a few days before the presidential election, bin Laden, who “hadn’t shown himself in nearly a year” (p. 335), made a surprise broadcast. He assailed Bush, talked about Michael Moore’s movie, said Bush was stupid, deceptive, a tool of big oil and big business, etc. (P. 335.) The pols, if I interpret Suskind correctly, blasted what they said was an attempt to swing the election to Kerry. The CIA’s view was different. Its people had spent years parsing the words of bin Laden and knew he spoke “only for strategic reasons.” (P. 336.) Knowing this, the CIA’s leadership believed bin Laden spoke as and when he did because he was aware that such a speech would help Bush get reelected. One official recalled “why the Soviets liked certain leaders, such as Nixon: because they were consistent and predictable.” (P. 336.) Another “talked about how bin Laden -- being challenged by Zarqawi’s rise -- clearly understands how his primacy as al Qaeda’s leader was supported by the continuation of his eye-to-eye struggle with Bush. ‘Certainly,’ she offered, ‘he would want Bush to keep doing what he’s doing for a few more years.’” (P. 336.) Bush, says Suskind, “is an ambitious man, atop a nation of ambitious and complex desires, who knows that when the al Qaeda leader displays his forceful presence, his own approval ratings rise, and vice versa.” (P. 337.)

I would add another possible reason why bin Laden would want Bush reelected, a reason Suskind discusses in part elsewhere. If I were bin Laden, then, as one CIA official said, I would have wanted and would still want Bush to remain in power. Bush’s stupid, malevolent and evil decisions were, and are, turning more and more of the Middle East against us. They were, and are, creating more and more jihadists. They were making Americans sicker and sicker of this war and less and less likely to support it. They were making it more and more likely that the west would ultimately be thrown out of, or would leave, the Middle East, which is exactly what bin Laden wants and has always been after They are helping to create an increasingly Muslim fundamentalist Middle East, which also is what bin Laden wants. They are, doubtlessly, contributing to the growing rise and increasing acceptance of Hamas and Hezbollah. And they have given jihadists a wonderful chance, which they have seized by bombings in Spain, London and elsewhere, to cause European allies to wish to separate themselves from the United States -- whereas a mass killing by hydrogen cyanide in the New York City subway system, the project called off by Zawahiri in 2003, would have created renewed sympathy for the United States and perhaps renewed support for a very hard line by both the U.S. and Israel. Could bin Laden rely on John Kerry to take Bushian actions which would be so amazingly helpful to bin Laden’s goals? Doubtlessly not. As inept as he is, and in part because he is inept, there was not a ghost of a chance that Kerry would help bin Laden achieve his goals by taking the same kind of actions that Bush was and is. No, for bin Laden, Bush was Old Reliable, No. 99, the man who could be depended on to score touchdowns every time -- for bin Laden. Of course, bin Laden would have wanted Bush to win in 2004. He would want him to win again in 2008 too if this weren’t barred by law. Maybe he is even hoping against hope for DICK in 2008, although he must know this can’t happen. When he made his October 29th speech, apparently called the ‘“October Surprise’” (p. 335), it is highly likely that bin Laden was cleverly taking advantage of the ignorance, rabid conservatism and just plain stupidity of so many American voters. And, one has to say, it worked.*

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Mit freundlichen Grüßen/ Cordialement/ Cordiali saluti/ Yours sincerelyDr. Patrick WilkinsonInstitute for Advanced Cultural Studies - EuropeKirchstrasse 32D-40227 Düsseldorf+49 171 645 9153Mobil +49 211 4953010e-mail: dr-wilkinson-ccll@online.deSee: www.maisonneuvepress.comhttp://maisonneuvepress.com/prod07.htmhttp://maisonneuvepress.com/prod06.htm This e-mail communication (and any attachment/s) are confidential and are intended only for the individual(s) or entity named above and to others who have been specifically authorized to receive it. If you are not the intended recipient, please do not read, copy, use or disclose the contents of this communication to others. Please notify the sender that you have received this e-mail in error by calling the phone number indicated or by e-mail, and delete the e-mail (including any attachment/s) subsequently. This information may be subject to a professional secrecy (e. g. of auditor, tax or legal advisor), other privilege or otherwise be protected by work product immunity or other legal rules. Thank you.

Re: The One Percent Doctrine.

AddendumIn case any doubt as to the theological roots of US "democracy" should remain, the fundamental political institutions which shaped US domestic politics are not the "town meeting" but the witch burning and lynching party. The town meeting enjoys a status similar to "Punch and Judy". For the majority of US citizens real politics are decided on the pyre or at the end of a rope. Hence there can be no real surprise at what goes on when US crusaders are sent to protect the faith outside of the Realm.And if you ask yourself whence this vitriole, I will tell you. We live in a part of the world that has been levelled enough for religious "reasons", not to mention the last two world wars. It is difficult not to become nauseous with the self-satisfaction of a country that has never had to fight a world war on its own ground and has been the only one to use nuclear weapons in combat.I am sure you will appreciate that this is not meant personally. You are an astute observer and a fluent writer. But I cannot help feeling that the gravity of the situation is underestimated.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Re: The One Percent Doctrine

Ron Suskind’s The One Percent Doctrine is not a good book. It’s a Washington book. There’s a big difference.

Washington books are a genre that started, I think, about 50 years ago with Alan Drury’s Advise And Consent. Drury’s work was a novel and, if memory serves, some other novels followed in its train. Then, in the 1970s and ’80s, the Washington book morphed into the kind of works written by Bob Woodward, books that tell you in excruciating dull detail more about everything than you want to know about anything. Washington books became a kind of who shot John work detailing that at 9 a.m. Ted told X to Paul, who at 9:15 relayed it to Sam but changed it slightly when doing so, with Sam then telling the undersecretary who immediately ordered an airplane to fuel up and then got on the plane with General Smashskull, who was for taking out Mr. Z as soon as possible, but the plane returned to the tarmac before taking off because the Secretary herself had heard incorrectly that General Smashskull was a good friend of Z’s and would protect him, and by the time all this was straightened out Z had escaped to Swaziland, where a green 1993 Land Rover was waiting to take him to the molybdenum mine where he secretly met with Ted’s undercover agent Yabbadabba, who later took a slow freighter back to Baltimore where Sam, having uncovered Ted’s duplicity, had three counter-counter agents waiting to -- well, you get the point.

Being a Washington book, the points Suskind wishes to make are not always crystalline, because they are spread here and there in the book and the writing is sometimes sort of wiseacreish or smart mouthed or patois-like rather than straight on. (I really don’t know how to accurately describe the style of writing: wiseacreish and smart mouthed and patois-like are not exactly accurate but are the best I can do.) And sometimes, as best I can tell, Suskind seems to be discussing the same events hundreds of pages apart without being entirely clear that they are the same events. Even so, however, he does make many points that I wish to summarize here because this writer finds them particularly important, or because they are new, or because they seem to be at risk of being overlooked in all the other “noise” that permeates Suskind’s pages, or because they confirm somewhat unusual thoughts this writer himself has put forth from time to time. (Scores or hundreds of other points are not summarized here, sometimes because they have been extensively discussed elsewhere (e.g., the failure of cooperation between the FBI and CIA).)

1. Suskind repeatedly says that a governing principle of the Bush administration, a principle pushed extensively by Cheney, is that if there is a one percent chance that terrorists or enemies may try something, then we must act as if it is a certainty. (Pp. 62, 81, 166, 170, 214.) This frees Bush et al. from having to assess competing evidence. It frees them indeed from even having to act on evidence as opposed to suspicion or hunch, since there is always a one percent chance of almost anything. This freedom from evidence is a freedom Bush seeks. (Pp. 62, 81, 170, 214, 225-226, 308.) As well, it helps elide a major Bush weakness -- ineptitude at analysis (sometimes called stupidity by mean people like this writer) -- and enables Bush to act on the basis of his gut and the (religion inspired) attitude with which he is comfortable. (P. 308.) Persons who are old fashioned, i.e., who believe in analyzing competing pieces of evidence, and in acting on evidence as opposed to emotion (like the CIA), find that their reports are not read, that their oral views are ignored, and that they are excluded from the inner circle. (P. 308.) Although lots of evidence-oriented people in government haven’t understood the point, Bush doesn’t want to hear rational analysis of competing pieces of evidence, because this just confuses him and undercuts the certitude with which he wishes to act.

We are, one would say, in the hands of people whose thinking is preenlightenment, is a throwback to medieval religious certitude instead of being evidence-based. This does not, of course, distinguish us from enemies like Islamic fundamentalists -- the bin Ladens, Imams, and Wahabists.

2. In personal intercourse Bush assesses people not on the basis of what they say, but visually -- on their body English, on whether they appear certain of what they say. (In this respect he looks for the certainty that lawyers display even when they don’t know what they are talking about, which is not uncommon.) This is a real problem when someone with important views is not a person who has a highly confident, good ol’ boy, “it’s a slam dunk” type of physical presentation. Bush’s failure or inability to judge what people are actually saying, as opposed to their physical presentation, can create real trouble. For instance, Bush not only got the famous memo of August 6, 2001 warning of possible al Qaeda attacks, but was briefed orally on the problem by someone from the CIA. As I understand what Suskind is saying, one reason Bush ignored what this CIA person had to say was that the guy did not have the confident, “I am certain of everything,” type of persona that Bush looks for. (Pp. 1-2.) (It should be noted that Suskind’s book seems very pro CIA. He feels, I think, that the CIA tries to look for, and advise and act on the basis of, evidence, including careful analysis of competing evidence. This, not the administration’s evidence-free method of acting, is what Suskind admires.)

3. As I understand it, another reason Bush ignored what the CIA briefer had to say was that he (Bush) was fixated on getting Saddam Hussein, and was paying no attention to al Qaeda. Bush came into office with a strong desire to take out Saddam, and intended to do so from day one. Only Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld knew that this was the plan. (Pp. 22-23, 25-26, 296, 306.)

4. Bush, Franks and other top officials were warned that, although bin Laden was surrounded on three sides in Tora Bora, the fourth side, the back door, was open. They were advised -- maybe “begged” would be an even more apt word -- to send marines to close off the fourth side. They refused. Bin Laden escaped. (Pp. 58-59.)

5. The CIA strongly believes that there are about a hundred or so suitcase sized nuclear weapons produced by the Soviet Union that are unaccounted for. (P. 6.) Bin Laden and other terrorists are eager to obtain such a weapon. (Ibid.) We also learned that al Qaeda was able to make very high quality, very deadly anthrax (pp. 212, 251-252), and that it had created a device, sort of like two paint cans, that could be used to create and release hydrogen cyanide, a deadly poison gas. (Pp. 194-195.) (Zyklon B, used by the Germans in the holocaust gas ovens, is a form of hydrogen cyanide.) (P. 195.) The government also found high quality al Qaeda reports with drawings, maps, etc., of buildings, banks, hotels, and other American targets which al Qaeda had cased. (P. 252.)

As one might expect from all this, our government was terrified of what might happen. It considered that the homeland is, in reality, unprotectable. (Pp. 186, 212, 270.)

6. We have had at least one, and I think Suskind is discussing two, high level al Qaeda informants who gave us information and, in one case, enabled us to catch a major al Qaeda fugitive, Khalid Sheik Mohammed. (Pp. 204-206.) For doing this the informant and his family were put in what seems to be the equivalent of a witness protection plan in the U.S. and the informant collected 25 million dollars plus other financial benefits. (Pp. 204-206.) (This was before an informant gave us Zarqawi, for which he is doubtlessly collecting 25 million also (unless -- and this is my own speculation -- al Qaeda possibly wanted Zarqawi dead because he was causing too much trouble for it by killing Muslims in Iraq and was a threat to the leadership of bin Laden).)

7. Bush knew very well that the rapprochement (if one can call it that) with Gadhafi was not due to the invasion of Iraq, but to Gadhafi’s longstanding desire to be accepted in and a player among the family of nations. Yet Bush lied by telling the public that the rapprochement was due to the invasion. (Pp. 221-223, 264-271.)

8. Bush and other high officials knew very well that top al Qaeda guys were being tortured. Bush had made clear that he wanted this done, and even asked the CIA whether the horrible methods it was using were getting any information. (Pp. 75-76, 152, see 164.) Those methods did not in fact get much worthwhile information, if I understand Suskind aright. (Pp. 228-229.) The torturers even threatened one top al Qaeda leader, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, that they would kill his wife and children unless he talked, but not even this worked. (He said that, if the CIA did so, they would simply be in a better place earlier.) (P. 230.)

One guy we tortured, Abu Zubaydah, was paraded to the American public by Bush as a top operational guy and, indeed, was paraded as possibly the number three guy in al Qaeda. In fact, we knew by then that he was not a top guy. We knew that, apparently because of a severe head wound suffered in fighting the Russians earlier on, Zubaydah was a schizoid -- he had a three-part personality (p. 95). As a CIA man on the case said, ‘“This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality,’” (p. 100.), and we knew he was merely “a logistics man, a fixer, mostly for a niggling array of personal items, like the guy you call who handles the company health plan, or benefits, or the people in human resources. There was almost nothing ‘operational’ in his portfolio. That was handled by the management team. He wasn’t one of them.” (P. 95.)

When we first caught Abu Zubaydah, he could not be interrogated because he had been very badly wounded in several places when captured. So the CIA secretly descended on some of the top doctors in the country -- Suskind does not give even a hint as to who they are -- and transported them to Pakistan to provide care to Zubaydah. They nursed him back to health, so that we could then torture him to try to get information (‘“He received the finest medical attention on the planet,’ said one CIA official. ‘We got him in very good health, so we could start to torture him.’” (P. 100.) He gave little information of any value (except for the name of Jose Padilla), but when he said al Qaeda planned to blow up banks or supermarkets, our government would go into panic mode. (Pp. 115-116.) As Suskind put it, “the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.” (P. 111.)

9. Bush could make false statements to the public about Zubaydah and other matters because the government kept everything very secret, so nobody had any facts with which to contest the lies that Bush and his administration were putting out. (Pp. 99, 226, 293.) (“[K]nowledge of Zubaydah’s limited role in al Qaeda, and apparent insanity, was closely held and deeply classified.” (P. 169.)) (The general secrecy that prevented people from having information with which to contest lies is very much like the situation regarding Bush’s initial claims of WMDs back in 2002-3, isn’t it? And were it not for revelations in the news media in the last few years about everything from horrendous legal memos to torture to rendition to electronic spying to killing civilians, nothing would have changed.)

10. The Bush administration, as we all know, is accusing The New York Times of treason. My view is that this fundamentally is because The Times has been the main engine of blowing the whistle on so many of the administration’s misdeeds. (The Washington Post has been up there too.) Most recently, The Times, The Journal and the LA Times blew the whistle on electronic financial tracking. But al Qaeda realized a long time ago that its members were being caught because of financial tracking of one kind or another. So it stopped moving money and messages in the ordinary ways (e.g., emails, cell phone calls, wire transfers, Western Union transfers), and started sending messages by courier and money by halawas -- a type of pervasive, Islamic-world storefront bank, I gather. (Pp. 277-279.) As Suskind puts it, “Eventually, and not surprisingly, our opponents figured it out. It was a matter, really, of deduction. Enough people get caught and a view of which activities they had in common provides clues as to how they may have been identified and apprehended. ‘We were surprised it took them so long, said one senior intelligence official.”’ (P. 279.)

11. Knowing that the homeland is indefensible, Bush and his cohorts wanted to draw terrorists into Iraq, so that they would all be in one place, where our powerful conventional army could fight them all. (Pp. 273-274.) Many Muslims have gone to Iraq to fight us, so, in that sense, Bush has himself created a link between Iraq and terrorism. (Unhappily though, there seem to be even more terrorists, both in Iraq and elsewhere, being produced by the war in Iraq. And lots of them, it is widely felt, are getting excellent training in Iraq for action elsewhere.)

In addition Bush felt that Iraq could serve as an object lesson to other countries that they had better not act contrary to the interests of the United States. (Pp. 214, 264.) (This seems to be somewhat like Nixon’s view that it would be helpful if the North Viet Namese thought he was a madman, because this would cause them to seek peace.) Bush lied to the public in this connection by telling it that because of Iraq, Gadhafi of Libya gave up on seeking WMDs. The truth, as mentioned above, and as the administration knew, was that the reason Gadhafi did so was because for years he had wanted to be accepted by and a player in the international community. But because everything in the administration was so secretive, Bush could lie about this with impunity. (Pp. 221-223, 264-271.)

12. The American shelling of Al Jazeera’s offices in Baghdad was intentional. (Pp. 137-138.) It was not the accident or mistake we pretended it was. Rather we had deliberately sent Al Jazeera a message. (Recently, I note, an official memo got leaked in Britain which said that Bush had (shockingly) suggested to Tony Blair that Al Jazeera should be bombed. This has not received much attention in the U.S.)

13. The intelligence services of the western world have a meeting once a year to discuss matters, to coordinate efforts, and to foster cooperation. (Pp. 82-87.) Each (or lots) of these services engage in electronic spying on other country’s citizens. But there are laws which prevent them from spying on their own citizens. What they do, therefore, if I understand Suskind rightly, is that they spy on each other’s citizens and then exchange information, thus evading their own countries’ bans against spying on their own citizens. (Pp. 85-86.)

This matter, it seems to me, is of obvious relevance to the scandals in our country about the NSA spying on U.S. citizens. Even if that were stopped, the U.S. government could -- and does? -- have other countries spy on American citizens for it.

14. The guy who planned the 2005 London subway bombings, Mohammed Sidique Khan, was under deep suspicion a few years earlier -- in 2003 I gather, although the date is not perfectly clear. We received word that he was coming to the U.S. We could have let him come here, and then followed him closely every minute of every day. He doubtlessly would have led us to others in America who were involved in terrorism. Instead, after several days of dithering about what to do, we put him on a no fly list, so that when he got to Heathrow he was told he could not go to the United States. Thus alerted that he was under suspicion, he knew not to do anything that would arouse suspicion, not to send incriminating emails or make incriminating phone calls. Instead he worked very quietly until he masterminded the 2005 subway bombings. (Pp. 200-203.)

15. In late 2004 DICK Cheney wanted the CIA to release a small part of a classified report that would lead one to the conclusion that the war in Iraq was aiding in the battle against jihadists. The report as a whole “concluded nothing of the sort. Many of its conclusions flowed in the opposite direction. To release that small segment would be willfully misleading.” (P. 340.) So a high CIA official declined Cheney’s request. DICK then expressed outrage to George’s man Porter Goss, who put pressure on the official. She still refused. “A few weeks after that, she was gone.” (P. 341.) We now know of course, due to revelations connected to the Plame/Wilson business, that misleading partial declassification is par for the pack of liars who are the administration.

16. A person “tied tightly into al Qaeda management” had somehow become a source for us. (He thought bin Laden may have made a major mistake in attacking us on 9/11, a subject which was a subject of debate in al Qaeda in early 2003.) In early 2003 he told us that a figure in al Qaeda had planned a major hydrogen cyanide attack in the New York City subway, which had been thoroughly cased by members of the attacking cell. There were only 45 days left before the attack when al Qaeda’s number two man, Ayman al Zawahiri, whom our government wants to catch or kill as much as Bin Laden, “had called off the attacks.” (P. 218, emphasis in original.) The informant did not know why Zawahiri had called them off. Much time was spent speculating, by Bush, Cheney, the CIA, etc., but there was no answer. (Pp. 216-220.)

About a year and a half later, on October 29, 2004, just a few days before the presidential election, bin Laden, who “hadn’t shown himself in nearly a year” (p. 335), made a surprise broadcast. He assailed Bush, talked about Michael Moore’s movie, said Bush was stupid, deceptive, a tool of big oil and big business, etc. (P. 335.) The pols, if I interpret Suskind correctly, blasted what they said was an attempt to swing the election to Kerry. The CIA’s view was different. Its people had spent years parsing the words of bin Laden and knew he spoke “only for strategic reasons.” (P. 336.) Knowing this, the CIA’s leadership believed bin Laden spoke as and when he did because he was aware that such a speech would help Bush get reelected. One official recalled “why the Soviets liked certain leaders, such as Nixon: because they were consistent and predictable.” (P. 336.) Another “talked about how bin Laden -- being challenged by Zarqawi’s rise -- clearly understands how his primacy as al Qaeda’s leader was supported by the continuation of his eye-to-eye struggle with Bush. ‘Certainly,’ she offered, ‘he would want Bush to keep doing what he’s doing for a few more years.’” (P. 336.) Bush, says Suskind, “is an ambitious man, atop a nation of ambitious and complex desires, who knows that when the al Qaeda leader displays his forceful presence, his own approval ratings rise, and vice versa.” (P. 337.)

I would add another possible reason why bin Laden would want Bush reelected, a reason Suskind discusses in part elsewhere. If I were bin Laden, then, as one CIA official said, I would have wanted and would still want Bush to remain in power. Bush’s stupid, malevolent and evil decisions were, and are, turning more and more of the Middle East against us. They were, and are, creating more and more jihadists. They were making Americans sicker and sicker of this war and less and less likely to support it. They were making it more and more likely that the west would ultimately be thrown out of, or would leave, the Middle East, which is exactly what bin Laden wants and has always been after. They are helping to create an increasingly Muslim fundamentalist Middle East, which also is what bin Laden wants. They are, doubtlessly, contributing to the growing rise and increasing acceptance of Hamas and Hezbollah. And they have given jihadists a wonderful chance, which they have seized by bombings in Spain, London and elsewhere, to cause European allies to wish to separate themselves from the United States -- whereas a mass killing by hydrogen cyanide in the New York City subway system, the project called off by Zawahiri in 2003, would have created renewed sympathy for the United States and perhaps renewed support for a very hard line by both the U.S. and Israel. Could bin Laden rely on John Kerry to take Bushian actions which would be so amazingly helpful to bin Laden’s goals? Doubtlessly not. As inept as he is, and in part because he is inept, there was not a ghost of a chance that Kerry would help bin Laden achieve his goals by taking the same kind of actions that Bush was and is. No, for bin Laden, Bush was Old Reliable, No. 99, the man who could be depended on to score touchdowns every time -- for bin Laden. Of course, bin Laden would have wanted Bush to win in 2004. He would want him to win again in 2008 too if this weren’t barred by law. Maybe he is even hoping against hope for DICK in 2008, although he must know this can’t happen. When he made his October 29th speech, apparently called the ‘“October Surprise’” (p. 335), it is highly likely that bin Laden was cleverly taking advantage of the ignorance, rabid conservatism and just plain stupidity of so many American voters. And, one has to say, it worked.*

*This posting represents the personal views of Lawrence R. Velvel. If you wish to respond to this email/blog, please email your response to me at velvel@mslaw.edu. Your response may be posted on the blog if you have no objection; please tell me if you do object.

VelvelOnNationalAffairs is now available as a podcast. To subscribe please visit VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com, and click on the link on the top left corner of the page. Dean Velvel’s podcast can also be found on Itunes or at www.lrvelvel.libsyn.com

Over here in the UK, one of the most popular (and long-running) TV comedies of all time was a show called "Only Fools and Horses", about two brothers called Derek ("Del Boy") and Rodney. Curiously, despite the common practice of US Networks buying-up UK comedies and remaking them as American versions (with varying degrees of success - "Til Death do Us Part" translated well into "All in the Family", but "Steptoe and Son" fell flat as Bill Cosby's "Sandford and Son") this comedy gem has largely been ignored by US Networks - although I doubt many of them will have truly worked out WHY they don't like it. The Show is set in SE London (but actually filmed near where I live, in Bristol and Weston-super-Mare.) It features nobody with a recognisable American accent, it seldom mentions America. Yet... it manages to be "about America". Rodney and DelBoy are street-maket traders, always looking for the "business opportunity" that gives rise to their catchphrase: "This time next year, we're going to be MILLIONAIRES!" The "business opportunity" always turns out to have a catch - many of the deals are barely legal - like the several gross of dolls that Derek buys turn out to be self-inflating sex-toys, not "Barbie" and "Cindy" as he'd imagined. Del's a minnow who fancies himself to be a shark. But he's a minnow who has swallowed "the American Dream" horse foot and artillery. For years, he'd demonstrate his unshakable faith in his destiny to be rich, his absurd pretentions... his faith in the American Dream.... and UK audiences would laugh and laugh at the absurdity of the idea. You can see why US Networks might not see this as translating into a potential hit American show....

The shows are available for rent or purchase on DVD. You can find them via Amazon.com, Ebay or possibly even your preferred peer-to-peer network. They're more closely described at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081912/ or at the BBC's own website http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/onlyfools/index.shtml Note that a recent BBC poll made "Only Fools and Horses" the UK's most popular sitcom... ever. Ahead of Fawlty Towers, Blackadder, Monty Python.... Seems that Brits find "the American Dream" truly hilarious. It also makes one wonder about Tony Blair's declaration that "American values are OUR values".

About Dean Velvel

Name:Lawrence
Velvel

Location:Andover, Massachusetts,
United States

Dean Velvel, an honors graduate of
the University of Michigan Law School, has practiced law in the public and private sectors,
and been a law professor. He is the author of the quartet Thine Alabaster Cities
Gleam. The books in the quartet are entitled: Misfits In America, Trail of
Tears, The Hopes and Fears of Future Years: Loss and Creation, and The Hopes
and Fears of Future Years: Defeat and Victory.

MSL's mission is to provide high quality, practical and affordable legal education to
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these persons access to the societal advancement that is available, in law and other fields,
to people with legal degrees. To accomplish its mission, MSL serves persons from working
class backgrounds, minorities, mid-life individuals who seek to change careers, and
immigrants. MSL also serves middle class people who increasingly have been shut out of legal
education. MSL gives individuals from all these groups a rigorous, useful, affordable legal
education so that they can improve their lives and better serve their communities.